Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Rot : A History of the Irish Famine - Padraic X. Scanlan

Rot

A History of the Irish Famine

By: Padraic X. Scanlan

Paperback | 23 June 2026 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback


$26.99

or 4 interest-free payments of $6.75 with

Available: 23rd June 2026

Preorder. Will ship when available.

'A vigorous and engaging new study of the Irish famine . . . Richly underpinned by research in contemporary sources and firmly rooted in historical scholarship.' Fintan O'Toole

'A vivid, polemical narrative that does justice to victims and explains the ideologies that worsened the disaster.' Irish Independent

'Scanlan's history of the ''Great Hunger' and its repercussions is meticulous, measured and damning.' Financial Times

'Mr. Scanlan's haunting and terrible book is undoubtedly a history title of the year.' Wall Street Journal

In the 1800s, as Britain became the world's most powerful industrial empire, Ireland starved. The Great Famine fractured long-held assumptions about political economy and 'civilisation', threatening disorder in Britain. Ireland was a laboratory for empire, shaping British ideas about colonisation, population, ecology and work.

In Rot, Padraic Scanlan reinterprets the history of this time and the result is a revelatory account of Ireland's Great Famine. In the first half of the nineteenth century, nowhere in Europe - or the world - did the working poor depend as completely on potatoes as in Ireland. To many British observers, potatoes were evidence of a lack of modernity among the Irish. However, Ireland before the famine more closely resembled capitalism's future than its past. While poverty before and during the Great Famine was often blamed on Irish backwardness, it did in fact stem from the British Empire's embrace of modern capitalism.

Uncovering the disaster's roots in Britain's deep imperial faith in markets and capitalism, Rot reshapes our understanding of the Famine and its tragic legacy.

More in British & Irish History

The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective - Sara Lodge
Holbein : Renaissance Master - Elizabeth Goldring

RRP $82.95

$60.75

27%
OFF
Abandoned Women : Scottish Convicts Exiled Beyond the Seas - Lucy Frost
The Catalpa Rescue - Peter FitzSimons

RRP $36.99

$29.75

20%
OFF
Bible of British Taste : Stories of Home, People and Place - Ruth Guilding
The First King of England : Æthelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom - David Woodman
The Siege : The Remarkable Story of the Greatest SAS Hostage Drama - Ben Macintyre
Say Nothing : True Story Of Murder and Memory In Northern Ireland - Patrick Radden Keefe
Churchill : Walking with Destiny - Andrew Roberts

RRP $35.00

$28.75

18%
OFF
The English Soul : Faith of a Nation - Peter Ackroyd

RRP $22.99

$21.75

Irish Fairy Tales and Folklore - W. B. Yeats

RRP $24.99

$22.75

Jane Austen at Home : A Biography - Lucy Worsley

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Exterminate/Regenerate : The Story of Doctor Who - John Higgs

RRP $55.00

$49.75

10%
OFF
The Life and Death of Richard III - Anthony Cheetham

RRP $60.00

$45.75

24%
OFF